THE NE,W YORKER that consumes itself. The aIr he had hreathed was filled with particles of brick dust. He accepted faces, not one of whIch he would put a name to, and knew the smell and touch of wet raIncoats worn by people he would never meet. In the streets of one place, Berlin, he walked on the deåd, but both cities were built over annihilated walls scarcely anyone could rememher. He knew that a lake is a ldke-that is, a place to swin1-and that parks and trees are good for chil- dren, but he had never known the nalTIe of a leåf or a tree until Moser's widow began telling him, c(Hnparing one wild grass wIth another, picking a flower, showing its picture in a book. In the morn- ing, standing beside hÏ1n in the ravine on the fal side of the house, she pointed to fields of white anemones that seemed covered with frost, and she gathered forget-me- nots, wild geranium, mauve and violet and pink, and valerian like lace, and lnare's-tails with fronds of green string. "'The first plant life on earth," sctid Katharine, bending down. For ct reason he could not in1meJiately interpret, the words, and the sight of the plant in Katharine's hand, rushed him back to his mother screaming, and the wartime photograph of his father, which, of course, was mute. Wishing for life without its past, for immeasurable distance from the first lIfe on earth, he groped to Sabine dnd Berlin instead of Kathanne and now. In the short daydream, Sabine frowned and turned her head sharply, then felt among the clothes on the floor for a cigarette. She told Ramsay she had had one abortion and would probably never marry. Later, she said she would travel and try a different husband in every country. She was not the doting Ger- man gid his father's crowd talked about in their anecdotes of the war. Her flat was shut up tight except when the Jani- tor's wife came to clean and fl ung the windows wide. The janitor's wife was not concerned about Ramsay (who had not spent an entire night with a girl be- fore) or SabIne dressed in two towels. "I saw a wild heast in the courtyard wIth black eyes, like an Italian," she , . '4.t \jJ'....}- ' I 1., ""'oH " r l'\1. L ; J' 1\( ;.. '/.\> '.lJ r:(i;" \r r: . ,. l' . ,.,,! ;". { I '! ìJ" ;'v; -: , . "' . .,:, t"' r- . --- I I !( " b7 u _ t 1 . - iI' ,,",' fn C -:: \;: t <<t . . . ' . . <--- f I ,I ......... . J r ' I' . i. -L ';.'\ 35 ] J ! ... :s ",t;, .{>. 'f !\ > f"., .J "So you don)t want any part of the world 1ny generation has made? Vf7 ell) I think I can do something" about that) Son.)) "'''' t. f,.(.'""- ...:. , .::.t J ..;,. . said, scrubbing the sink. This was the onl) house on the street older than RaInsay, and the courtyard was full of rats and secrets. When it rained the courtyard smelled of ashes. Laughing about the janitor's wife and the Italian rat, SabIne stood naked before her mir- ror and said, "Look at how brown I am." One of her admirers had given her a sunlamp. The first plant life on earth was spongy and weak; and the sun, in and out of clouds, sucked up every trace of color from Kathctrine Moser's hair and hand and eyeS. He had seen color paler than Katharine's hand on angles of bnck-was it paint splashed? Car lights washing by? There were no fis- sures Ìn the brick, no space for fronds and stems, no rOOIn for leftovers. Why IS bnck ugly? Who says It is? Ramsay's father knows how n1uch gravel per cubìc centimetre is needed for several different sorts of concrete; he wrote his thesis on this twenty years ago, when he came back from the war. "In Berlin," Ramsay started to say-something about bright weeds growing-but Katharine saw a mag- pie. "This IS their season," she said. "They prey on fledglings." She told of the shrike, the jay, but he was thinking about the black, red-brown, smoke- . Inarked courtyard in Berlin, lnd Sa- bine, shivel ing because she was sud- denly cold, tender when it was too late, when there was 110 need for tenderness, asking what she considered serious ques- tions in her version of English : "Was that all? \Vorth it? All that impor- tant r" She was not looking into space but at a clock she could not bother winding that was stopped forever at siÀ minutes to threL. He and Katharine walked back to the lawn and the breakfast table, and she tipped her head like Sabine's, though not in remembrance of pleasure, onl) because the sun was strong again. She spoke to the cook's little boy, in straw hat and red shorts, pretending to gar- den; he was at their feet. Then behind and above them a branch rocked. It was Katharine's cat attacking a nest. The fury of the battle could be meas- ured by the leaves rustling and thrash- ing in the windless day. A cat face the size of the moon must be over the nest; the eyes and the paws-there was no help for it-came through sunny leaves. The sky was behind the head. "Stop him, stop him!" RamsdY screamed like a gid or like a child. "Pip! Naught) PIp!" She clapped her hands. "He's got one, I'm afraid." She was not disturbed Neither was the